Bitter Truth (10 page)

“What do you think?”

“I think I just hate cats.”

“Your therapist might be on to something.”

“Why is it that everyone wants to dig up my family’s past in order to save me? My therapist, you.”

“The police also tried to look into any familial connection with your sister’s death but were cut off by Mr. Harrington at the bank.”

She looked up at me when I mentioned Harrington’s name.

“And, deep down, Caroline, you want to look into it too.”

“You’re being ludicrous.”

“Why else would you pay my retainer with a check drawn on the family bank? It was as clear as an advertisement.”

Her voice slowed and softened. “Do you really think Jacqueline was murdered?”

“It’s possible. I can’t be certain yet, but I am certain I’m the only one still willing to look into it.”

“And you think with the answer you can save me?”

“Do you need saving?”

She closed her eyes and then opened them again a few seconds later. “What do you want me to do, Victor?”

“Sign the contract.”

“I won’t. I can’t. Not until I know everything.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I’ll have given up all control and I can’t ever do that.”

She said it flatly, as if it were as obvious as the sun, and there was something so transparent in the way she said it that I knew it to be true and that pushing her any further would be useless.

“How about this, Caroline?” I said. “I’ll agree to continue investigating any connection between the mob and your sister’s death so long as you agree to start telling me the truth, all the truth, and help me look at any possible family involvement too. I’ll pursue the case without a contract and without a retainer, providing you promise me that if I find a murderer, and you decide to sue, then you’ll let me handle the case on my terms.”

She stared some more at the medal and thought about what I had proposed. I didn’t like this arrangement, I liked things signed, and sealed, but it was my only hope, I figured, to keep on the trail of my fortune, so I watched oh so carefully as her hand played with the medal and her face worked over the possibilities.

When I saw a doubt slip its way into her features I said, “Did you ever wonder, Caroline, how the medal got into the pond in the first place?”

She looked up at me and then back at the medal, hefting it in her hand before she grasped the chain and hung her grandfather’s Distinguished Service Cross back around her neck. “You find that out, Victor, and I’ll sign your damn contract.”

“Is that a promise?”

“There’s a dinner at the family estate, Veritas, on Thursday night,” she said. “The whole family will be there. You can be my date.”

“They shouldn’t know we’re looking into your sister’s death.”

“No,” she said. “You’re right, they shouldn’t.”

“Anything I should know before I meet them all?”

“Not really,” she said, with an uncomfortably knowing smile. “Just don’t come hungry.”

14

A
BOUT HOW MANY conversations did you have with the defendant in the course of your dealings, Detective Scarpatti?”

“I don’t know, lots. I taped five and we had others. It took awhile for him to get it all straight. Your boy, he’s not the swiftest deal maker out there, no Monty Hall.”

“So you were forced to lead him through the deal, is that right?”

“Just in the details, but there was no entrapment here, Counselor, if that’s what you’re getting at. Cressi came to me looking to buy the weapons. He wanted to buy as many as I could sell. I told him one-seventy-nine was all I could come up with and he was disappointed with that number. But he brightened when I added the grenade launchers and the flamethrower. To be truthful, I was more surprised than anyone when he showed up. We were targeting a Jamaican drug outfit with the operation. But your guy could never make up his mind on the spot. He always said he had to think about it.”

“Like there was someone he had to run the details by, is that it?”

Scarpatti creased his brow and looked at me like he was straining to actually dredge up a thought and then said, “Yeah, just like that.”

Detective Scarpatti was a round, red-faced man who smiled all the while he testified. Jolly was the word he brought to mind as he sat and smiled on the stand, his hands calmly clasped over his round hard belly. His was a look that inspired trust, which is why he was such an effective undercover cop, I figured, and an effective witness. All cops have an immediate advantage as they step into the witness box in front of a jury; they are, after all, men and women who devote their lives to law enforcement and competent, truthful testimony is only what is to be expected. Of course they usually get into trouble as soon as they open their mouths, but Scarpatti wasn’t getting in trouble at this preliminary hearing and I sensed he wouldn’t get into any trouble at the trial either. I had never met the guy before but one look at him on the stand and I knew he would bury Peter Cressi. What jury wouldn’t convict on the cogent testimony of Santa Claus?

“Now in any of those myriad discussions, did Mr. Cressi ever specifically mention he had to run the details of the deal by someone else?”

“No.”

“Did he ever mention that he had a partner?”

“No, he didn’t. In fact I even asked once and he said he was flying strictly solo.”

“In any of your phone conversations did you ever sense there was someone else on the line?”

“No, not really. But come to think of it, now that you asked, there was one conversation where he stopped in the middle of a comment, as if he was listening to someone.”

“Did you hear a voice in the background?”

“Not that I remember.”

“All right, Detective. Now in the course of your conversations, did you ask Mr. Cressi what he planned to do with the guns?”

“Sure. Part of my job is to draw out as much information as possible, especially in a deal of this magnitude.”

“And how did he respond?”

“Can I refer to my notes?”

“Of course.”

Preliminary hearings are dry affairs, generally, where the defense tries to find out as much as possible about the case without tipping any stratagems that might be used at trial. I was putting on no testimony, presenting no evidence, Cressi was remaining blissfully silent. What I was doing was sitting at the counsel desk, sitting because that’s the way we do it in Philadelphia, the lazy man’s bar, asking my simple little questions, learning exactly how high was the mountain of evidence the state had against my client and whatever else I could glean about his attempted purchase of the guns. I was in a tricky position, stuck between a bad place and two hard guys, defending my client while also trying to find out for my patron, Mr. Raffaello, what Cressi was planning to do with his arsenal. Tricky, hell, it was flat-out unethical, as defined by the Bar Association, but when your client is a gleeful felon buying up an armory and a mob war is brewing and lives are at stake, especially your own, I think the ethical rules of the Bar Association become somewhat quaint. I think when you are that far over the edge it is up to you to figure out your way in the world and if they decide you stepped over a line and pull your ticket then maybe in the end they’re doing you a favor.

While Scarpatti was flipping through his little spiral-bound notebook, I turned to scan the courtroom. It was full, of course, but not to witness my scintillating cross-examination. Once I was finished there was another case set to go and then another and then another, as many hearings as defendants who needed to be held over for trial, and the defendants and lawyers and witnesses and families in the courtroom for those hearings that were to follow Cressi’s were waiting and watching, their faces slack with boredom. Except one face was not slack with boredom, one face was watching our proceedings with a keen, almost frightening interest. Thin sharp face, oily gray hair, dapper black suit, with a crimson handkerchief peeking from his suit pocket. What the hell was he doing here?

“All right, yeah. I got it right here,” said Scarpatti.

I turned around and faced the witness, whom I had forgotten about in the instant I noticed the mortician’s face of Earl Dante staring at me from the gallery of the courtroom. “All right, Detective, what did the defendant say to you when you asked him what he planned to do with the guns?”

“He said, and I’m quoting now, he said, ‘None of your fucking business.’ ”

Scarpatti laughed and the slack crowd, suddenly brought to life by the obscenity, laughed with him. Even Cressi laughed. You know you’re in trouble when your own client laughs at you.

“Thank you for that, Detective,” I said.

“Anytime, Counselor.”

When I was finished handling Scarpatti, denting his story not a whit, the prosecution rested and I stood and made my motion to dismiss all charges against my client. The judge smiled solicitously as she denied my motion and scheduled Cressi’s trial. I made a motion to reduce my client’s bail. The judge smiled solicitously as she denied my motion and, instead, raised his bail by a hundred thousand dollars, ordering Cressi to be taken into custody immediately by the sheriff until the additional funds could be posted. I objected strenuously to the increase, requesting she reconsider her addition, and she smiled solicitously, reconsidered, and added another fifty thousand to the amount. I made an oral motion for discovery, the judge smiled once again as she denied my motion and told me to seek informal discovery from the prosecution before coming to her with my requests.

“Anything else, Mr. Carl?” she said sweetly.

“Please, in heaven’s name, do me a favor here, Vic, and just say no,” said Cressi, loud enough for the whole courtroom to laugh again at my expense. Maybe I should have given up the law right there and hit the comedy circuit.

“I don’t think so, Your Honor,” I said.

“That’s probably a wise move.” The slam of her gavel. “Next case.”

Dante was waiting for me outside the courtroom, in one of the columnar white hallways of the new Criminal Justice Building. He leaned against a wall and held tight to his briefcase. Behind him, his head turning back and forth with an overstudied guardedness, was the weightlifter I had seen with Dante at the Roundhouse’s Municipal Court. Dante had one of those officious faces that was never out of place, a face full of condolence and efficiency. A dark face, close-shaven, with small very white teeth. His back stayed straight as he leaned and his cologne was strong. He could have been a maître d’ at the finest French restaurant in hell.
Table for two? But of course. Would that be smoking or would you prefer to burn outright with your dinner?
The only comforting thing about being face to face with Earl Dante was that he couldn’t then be behind my back.

“Find out anything yet, Victor?” Dante said to me in a calm resonant voice that held a slight lisp, as if his tongue was too long for his mouth and forked.

I felt a chill even though it was hot in that corridor. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Those questions about possible partners and anything Cressi might have said about his intentions for those guns, very clever.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. You keep searching, you’ll find something.” He stared at me for a long moment, the significance of which I couldn’t gauge, and then turned his head away. “You might not have heard, Victor, but Calvi’s out.”

“I heard.”

“You liked Calvi, didn’t you? You were friends.”

“We shared a few meals.”

He turned his head to stare at me again. “You were friends.”

“Calvi doesn’t have friends. He despises everybody equally. But there were those who could stand his cigars, and those who couldn’t. I could, that was all, so we had lunch now and then and chatted about the Eagles.”

“He took a shine to you, all right. But he’s out. The organizational chart has been changed. You should be reporting to me from now on.”

“I don’t report,” I said. “That’s not what I do. I represent my clients to the best of my ability, that is all.”

“That’s never all.”

“With me, that is all.”

“You find out anything you’ll be smart and report to me, see?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dante started sucking his teeth. His mouth opened with a slick leeching sound. “Want to hear a story?”

“Not particularly.”

“Out of high school I enlisted,” said Dante, ignoring my protest. “Want to know why? My father was an animal, that’s why. I was willing to shave my head and take orders like a dog for two years because my father was an animal. But I was also patriotic, see? Still am. I hear the anthem at a ball game and tears spring. I still love my country, even after they sent me to that shithole. See, there was nothing out there that was tougher than my father. I love my goddamn country, but over there I learned there is something beyond patriotism. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“It’s called survival. I didn’t survive by volunteering for every crappy mission some promotion-happy lieutenant dreamed up before we could frag him. And I didn’t survive by taking one step beyond the step I had to take. I survived by remembering that I couldn’t love my country if I was dead, see? Loyalty, it only goes so far. After that it doesn’t go no more. Things are changing fast, Victor. Calvi’s not the only one that’s going, there are others. You make the right choice and you come to me first, understand?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I heard you visited our friend Jimmy Dubinsky yesterday, so I thought you might like to know. He died this morning. Right there on the operating table.”

“Oh my God.”

“They had that wire up his heart and he had himself a massive. That’s the funny thing about Jimmy, everything about him was massive, even his death. Just thought you might like to know. Funeral’s Friday. Your people, Victor, they don’t mess around when it comes to burying their dead. A guy doesn’t even have time to cool before he’s in the ground.”

“But I just saw him yesterday. He can’t…”

“Some kids they showed up in our unit, we didn’t even want to know their names. You could see it in their eyes they wouldn’t last. I’m seeing that look right now, Victor.” He sucked his teeth again and chucked me on the shoulder. “See you at the funeral.” Then he turned and started walking away, holding his briefcase, walking off to bail out Cressi once again.

The weightlifter gave me a nasty wink and followed him down the corridor.

I watched them go and then fell to the wall, my back against the porous white stone, and covered my eyes with a hand while I shook. Jimmy dead. I had a hard time fathoming it. I actually liked the guy. But the news was worse than that. That tooth-sucking Earl Dante wanted me to pick a side without a scorecard, without a rule book, without even knowing what game we were playing. The way I looked at it, if I picked wrong I would be as dead as Jimmy and if I picked right I would be as dead as Jimmy. All I knew for sure was that I was on the wrong playing field and needed desperately to get out. When I had told Beth I had to flee the law or it would kill me, she didn’t know I was being literal as hell.

And I couldn’t help but think, as I shook against the corridor wall, that my fate in the coming mob apocalypse and my investigation of the dark secrets of the Reddmans would somehow become entwined. I was right, of course, but in a way I could never then have even vaguely imagined.